Erik Knudsen- Guest Lecture

One Wednesday 7th December we had a Guest Lecturer named Erik Knudsen came in to do a talk and presentation on his work. He was born in Ghana to a Danish father and Ghanaian mother and later on went on to grow up and to be educated in Denmark as well as studying in Britain for a short while. Film Maker and is now the Professor of Film Practice at the University of Salford, in Manchester. In his different types of documentary video he shows a variety of scenes which mostly show peoples lives and how they cope with on a day to day basis. During the lecture, consisted of focusing on 4 different themes Courage, Simplicity, Humility and Creativity. In his work he uses these themes.


His work is mainly based around short documentary films, where he uses peoples lives to create each film. Although one of his films named 'One day Tafo' is a reflection on his life as it was set in Akim, Ghana where Knudsen had spent most of his life, Due to his nationality being both Danish and Ghanaian. I feel that his video clip that he showed was incredily moving in the way in which it showed the awful conditions that the Ghanaian slaves had to live with. To create this film he visited an old slavery ground which he then used the noise of the the slaves being tortured and beaten to create the emotional scenes. It also created a very sinister effect due to the fact how derelict the grounds were, like they had just been deserted and left, making it feel haunting for anyone who may visit the location.

Also he creates films which consist of no speech , just the background noises of everyday activities such as cars passing by, birds, and people talking. I feel that this is effective in some of his films, for example, 'Vainilla Chip' which is set in Cuba, showing a short documentary of a Cuban man selling ice cream. I did like this video when it started to make sense what it was actually about. During the film the man comes across photos of his wife who had died, this was very moving as it was clear that he was mourning the death of his wife. I think that by having no direct speech in the film expresses the lonliness that the man is obviously feeling, it also make it more powerful as you are concentrated on how he is carrying on living his life, clearly difficult for him as at one point in the film he gets emotional which I think has an even greater way of making the viewer empathise with him.






http://www.onedayfilms.com/page/erik-knudsen

Not only does he create films but he is also into Photography and has taken a number of photographs in various countries such as China, Cuba and England. Being a Film maker still enables him to have a good eye for caputring the right moment and shows emotion within his pictures, as he knows exactly the right moment to capture his shots. He photographs everyday life and quite a lot of his work has a sort of moody, sinister feel to it. Especially with the dark grey skies and the darkening contrast of colour.
I really like his photos, the cooling tones mixed in with the black and white shows more emotion within the photograph, I also like the way he uses a documentary style in his work by capturing all aspects of everyday life.